Tag Archives: Captain Cold

Sep 19 2013

The Flash 23.3: Rogues

rogues 23.3Today, Patrick and Scott are discussing The Flash 23.3: Rogues, originally released September 18th, 2013. This issue is part of DC’s Villain Month. Click here for our coverage of Villain Month.

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Patrick: I wouldn’t say that Captain Cold is an alcoholic, but he does drink. Occasionally, he drinks to escape, but he also drinks to celebrate. It’s a dimension of who he his, but it doesn’t define him, which is so rare in comics. If someone’s a drinker, that’s probably some horrible vice that pigeonholes them into being abusive, inattentive or otherwise absent. Hell, Taylor and I just posted a piece of Casey Jones’ alcoholic father in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles yesterday. Beer is a consistent factor in this issue, it sees Cold through despair, it helps him unwind, and it’s even a sign of hospitality. Cold’s boozing habits are nuanced and resist simple definition, just like the man himself. Continue reading →

Mar 4 2013

The Flash 17

Alternating Currents: The Flash 18, Drew and Pivitor

Today, Drew and guest writer Pivitor are discussing the Flash 17, originally released February 27th, 2013.

Drew: “Move forward” are the words the Flash lives by — both the man and the title. We’ve seen both accept rather profound changes, from the newfound abilities of the Rogues to his own death, rolling with the punches where most superheroes (and their series) might work to return things to their status quo. At the same time, writers Brian Buccellato and Francis Manapul are ever committed to their own continuity, recalling and building upon details first mentioned months earlier. The fact that those elements don’t come into play until long after they are introduced gives the series a propulsive sense of forward motion, allowing it to build incrementally. Thus, issue 17 can resolve plot elements first established in issue 6, as the Rogues, Gorillas, and the victims lost in the Speed Force finally get their due. Continue reading →

Jan 31 2013

The Flash 16

flash 16

Today, Patrick and Scott are discussing the Flash 16, originally released January 30th, 2013.

Patrick: We expect our heroes to bravely sacrifice themselves for the greater good. If we’re blessed with complex characters, we can even expect this of our anti-heroes. But what about our ancillary characters? With the smoke-screen of a superheroic battle for the fate of city, real-world sacrifices tend to go unnoticed. Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato deliver plenty of that bombastic hero action, but bury under it the sad, frustrated story of Iris West.  Continue reading →

Jan 7 2013

The Flash 15

flash 15

Today, Patrick and Mikyzptlk are discussing the Flash 15, originally released January 2nd, 2013.

Patrick: Whenever a writer keeps up several narrative threads at one time, one of us will say that he or she is “spinning a lot of plates.” It’s an odd metaphor. I mean — “juggling” works just as well to express the same thing and it’s a much more common activity. My friend Pete Pfarr had a KLUTZ book that taught him how to juggle, but there sure as shit wasn’t any KLUTZ book to teach him plate spinning. So what makes that turn-of-phrase so useful in describing the storytelling in The Flash 15? Possibly because we get the sense that the stories continue (the plates continue to spin) even when we’re not watching them. But I think the real reason we use the metaphor — and the only reason we’d want to see someone spinning plates (because: boring, amirite?) — is because we can’t wait to see what happens when too many plates are spinning and they all come crashing down. Boldly, Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato give us just that. Continue reading →

Nov 30 2012

The Flash 14

Alternating Currents: Flash 14, Drew and ScottToday, Drew and Scott are discussing the Flash 14, originally released November 28th, 2012.

Drew: I’ve always seen postmodernism as inevitable. As someone who likes art, consuming art about art just makes sense to me. It’s quite easy to take commentary too far — forcing the art to far up its own ass to really be relatable — and while I have a special place in my heart for stories that do that, it’s much more satisfying when they can support a compelling narrative, as well. Brian Buccellato and Francis Manapul nail that type of just-right meta-text time and time again, as Barry grapples with his relationship to his own identity, history, and even time itself. Their pacing and narrative style have remained fluid enough to accommodate all of these ideas, tying them back to Barry’s own experience of the world. Issue 14 continues the recent trend of expanding the scope beyond Barry’s subjectivity, revealing a rewarding complexity to the world he lives in. Continue reading →

Oct 25 2012

The Flash 13

Alternating Currents: Flash 13, Drew and PatrickToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing the Flash 13, originally released October 24th, 2012.

Drew: I like The Flash. It’s a crisp, fun, dense comic, full of endearing characters and incredible art. Reading it over the past year has been an extremely rewarding experience as a fan of comics. I also like liking The Flash. The fan community around this title, from commenters to bloggers to the creators themselves have been as open and inviting as anywhere in comics. Writers Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato have been incredibly approachable, and willing to discuss all of the things that make me love this title so much. In many ways, liking this title has been as rewarding as reading this title, thanks to all the wonderful discussions we’ve had about it. For that reason, issues that fail to meet my (admittedly high) expectations for this title are especially disappointing, to such a degree that I lose any objective sense of how good the issue actually is; is it the issue, or is it me? Let that be the grain of salt you take when I say that The Flash 13 is one of those issues.

Continue reading →

Aug 31 2012

The Flash Annual 1

Alternating Currents: Flash Annual, Patrick and DrewToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing the Flash Annual 1, originally released August 29th, 2012.

Drew: When I interviewed Francis Manapul back in April, he expressed that he reveled at the unique expectations mandated by the New 52. Specifically, he expressed that “the best thing about knowing what people are expecting is when I change something, it seems shocking.” Subverting expectations is such a simple concept — and one so central to genre fiction in general — that you’d think it would start to lose its spark; but then again, with Manapul and Brian Buccellato on writing duties, nothing ever is that simple.

Continue reading →

Aug 27 2012

The Flash 12

Alternating Currents: Flash 12, Drew and Patrick

Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing the Flash 12, originally released August 22nd, 2012.

Patrick: Bad guys don’t make for the best teams.  Hell, superheroes seldom make functional teams. 90% of team stories center around just how hard it is to put individual egos on hold and actually work as a team. Sometimes the group gels to confront a common, insurmountable enemy; sometimes they’re extorted into working together; and sometimes they seem to be the only people in the whole universe going through the same trials. But bad guys only get together for one reason: take down the hero. Right? Well, The Flash #12 has something to say about that. Continue reading →

Mar 29 2012

The Flash 7

Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing the Flash 7, originally released March 28th, 2012.

Drew: When we wrote about the Flash 6 last month, we couldn’t get over the thematic richness of that issue as it explored concepts of cause and effect through time and space. One of the reasons that issue is so satisfying is because it speaks to our own experience of events — we can arrange them chronologically, but they often have connections to distant moments in time. This is the Flash as the mortals around him (or, perhaps more importantly, comics fans) experience him; sometimes out-of-order chronologically, but never emotionally. With the Flash 7, Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato set out to do something much more ambitious, as they put the burden of cause on our hero without any real understanding of the effect. Continue reading →

Feb 23 2012

The Flash 6

Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing the Flash 6, originally released February 22nd, 2012.

Drew: Barry Allen has a strange relationship with time. It’s the essence of his character; he moves (and thinks) fast enough for issues of cause and effect to not matter to him in the same way they do for us. The complexity of that relationship increases exponentially when time travel is added to the mix, breaking down the meaning of cause and effect altogether. Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato have done a great job introducing these elements without giving Barry absolute control over time. The EMP blast from the previous few issues addresses these complications dramatically, but issue 6 is told in a non-linear fashion, allowing Manapul and Buccellato to address the issue of time travel thematically. I’m going to re-shuffle the story into chronological order for the sake of clarity (a la our Batwoman 6 write-up), but understand that the story is arranged in LOST-style flashbacks to reveal the causes of events after the effect has been established. Continue reading →